Made it!

I made it to Hanoi safely! Japan Airlines is the sweetest airlines to travel on, seriously the ladies are amazing and their accent is the coolest. I sat next to this women from London, Canada and we spent the entire 22 hours traveling from Chicago to Hanoi together! It was a blast to get to know her and to have someone to travel with. I had the awesome opportunity to see my brothers sister, my aunt, at the Tokyo airport during my four hour layover. It was a great surprise! There is so much to tell you guys from my first three days here!

 My first impressions of Hanoi:  

1.French influence in the architecture: There is nothing quite like it, it's beautiful! All the buildings are built up here because land is scarce. They are mostly four to five story's tall and all in different colors.
2. It's beautiful, its so green here and the city life is very busy. Downtown they have planted trees everywhere and there are a lot of old trees here that go over the streets. Out in the rural the rice fields are gorgeous and very exotic looking. Also living close to downtown there it's pretty loud with all the bikes even very early in the morning.
3. Masks, everyone wears face masks when riding their motor bike. You always see people from Asian countries wearing masks to be healthier and now I understand why they wear them. All of the bikes and cars that are on the road produce a lot of gasses or the random fires on the side of the roads. The mask is there to help but instead of wearing an entire motorcycle helmet that covers the mouth they wear bicycle helmets.


Friday I rode on a motor bike for fours hours (there and back) to get to the lacquer factory outside of Hanoi. It's a small factory building that is connected to the family's house. This was such a cool experience to see the rural part of the country that a lot of people don't get to see when they visit. The drive out there took me through the downtown all the way through many different villages. The village is basically one big family and there were maybe 15 workers yesterday. The women who owns the factory was very nice even though I couldn't communicate with any of them. I'm seriously regretting that I didn't learn more then "hello" and "my name is" in Vietnamese. But I will continue to practice and learn more everyday! I did work in the factory for a little bit they taught me how to put gold and silver flakes onto paper that would be samples for our customer.

In the factory:
~They like to squat. This means when they work, go to the bathroom, or prepare meals they do it all in squatting position. They all worked on the floor sitting on little blocks that were a few inches from the floor. I sat in that position for 30 minutes while I was helping and it was painful.

~From what I have seen so far women play a bigger role in the business world here then men. Most of the time I would see women selling items on the side of the road, in the rice fields working, or doing any hard labor. The men play a different role in society here then in the United States. From what I could see from driving around they would come together on the streets to socialize, smoke, or drink together.

~Sanitation is not a thing here. The factory was in the same place as the kitchen and bathroom. I have been fully introduced to a squatty potty! All the fumes from the lacquer or the sanding process shared the same space as their maid was making lunch. I walked into the factory and the first thing this women does is dangle this live chicken in my face that has it's legs tied together for like a minute and she just has the hugest smile on her face. I saw that turkey go from alive to dead right in the middle of the factory. Let's just say I didn't eat that part of the meal.

~Something weird that stood out to me was that this younger girl who had a child was feeding him tea and some type of formula. She was feeding him tea to a month year old! In people's homes here they will go to a studio to have a picture taken but will pick out a background because there are no nice places to take picture here. One of the pictures in this home was their grandchild but in the background was a typical suburban home with bright green grass.